Embodiments of the inventive subject matter generally relate to the field of networking protocols and, more particularly, to mitigating connection identifier collisions in a communication network.
Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is a connection-oriented transport protocol that provides reliable data communication between two network devices (e.g., a server and a client). When the server actively terminates a TCP connection between the server and the client, the client closes a client socket on which the connection was established (e.g., considers the connection to be in a CLOSED state). However, the server does not close a corresponding server socket. Instead, the server considers the connection to be in a TIME_WAIT state for a predefined time interval. In doing so, the server can protect against receiving and processing stale messages transmitted via a previous instance of the connection. If prompted, the server can establish a new instance of the connection after the predefined time interval associated with the TIME_WAIT elapses.